Baudelaire: Flesh and Spirit Book

I finished reading this splendid biography of Pierre Loti by Lesley Blanch. It is a marvelous book on an extraordinary French writer, acrobat, soldier and traveler. It talks of Loti's meeting kings and queens of Romania, France, Spain, Serbia and the UK; sultans of Ottoman Turkey and Ataturk, and many French politicians, and notable people and army commanders. It talks of his brilliant travels to Far East, India, China, Cambodia, Turkey - his beloved second country -, Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, North Africa and the USA and how he disliked New York City. It also mentioned his love affairs with women and men alike, his marriage, and his secret second family from the Basque. The book mentioned his atheism, trials not to annoy his devote Protestant mother and his secret affection to Islam - because of the Turks he loved and how he took a mosque from Damascus and built it in his house. He kept a secret illegitimate family from the Basque. I found him strange with his liberal life, the books he deems immoral at the end of his life, yet his admiring Muslim call of prayer and building that mosque and even said to be directed to face Mecca upon his death. His life was quite strange and he was quite a character. I was surprised how he stood by Turkey till the end and even criticized the Armenians! There are details of his love affair with a married Circassian-Turkish woman - upon whom he wrote Aziyade - and then another love affair with two young Turkish women and a French journalist who claimed to be a Turkish oppressed woman. It was such a nice book and a great journey to explore.

Quotes:

Now that the furthest points of the compass can be reached in a matter of hours, the flavour of travel is lost.
Journeying in search of romance, and that, after all, is our business in this world. Joseph Conrad
Silver locks are the spray which covers the ocean after a tempest. Carmen Sylva
The atheist was, in reality, a profoundly devout man whose intellect had overcome his original, ancestral beliefs, leaving him stranded.
Who can look on Damascus for the first time and remain unmoved? Pierre Loti
There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water; there is a silence in it. Walter Savage Landor